Sojourning through life, Scott Vaughan reflects on his uncle and gratitude

Ed Todd | Reporter-Telegram

Published 10:25 am, Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Photo: Tim Fischer

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

Scott Vaughan looks over the finish on a table at his furniture refinishing store. Photo by Tim Fischer/Midland Reporter-Telegram

Scott Vaughan looks over the finish on a table at his furniture refinishing store. Photo by Tim Fischer/Midland Reporter-Telegram

Photo: Tim Fischer

Sojourning through life, Scott Vaughan reflects on his uncle and gratitude

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

“Life is a highway,” said the philosophizing Scott Vaughan, who prefers traveling the river solo aboard his kayak in the scenic wilderness of the Devils River that winds toward the Rio Grande.

His is a peaceful passion, demanding alertness, boldness, preparation and wonderment.

“It is pretty wild,” he said of the highway metaphor from ruts and detours to the serenity of adventuresome pathways toward horizons. “I am going my way. Things are good.”

At age 53, Vaughan enjoys life. He leaves boredom in his wake.

Always with him is the spirit of his Uncle Tommy, his mentor, inspiration and a cause for tears and gratitude.

Thomas D. Nix rarely talked about “his battles in the war” when uncle and nephew had coffee at a Main Street café before the day’s work at Nix Trading Post.

Nix’s father, Thomas M. Nix, established the business early in World War II at another Main Street address near Agnes Fitzsimmons’s downtown café.

When Vaughan recalls war tales sparingly told to him by his late uncle, he is enlivened as if he were transported into his uncle’s position as gunner and radio-radar operator in the cockpit of the U.S. Marine Corps Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber in the Pacific Theater.

Descending from high altitude with airbrakes deployed, Nix’s Dauntless would release her bomb as the target loomed. Aviator and gunner in the dual-control, tandem-seat aircraft would “crank back on that stick” in pulling out of the dive before they would black out or crash.

Nix — who volunteered the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor — was a sergeant and received the Distinguished Flying Cross for valiant flights into combat.

With peace restored, Nix in 1946 joined his father at Nix Trading Post, a popular store specializing in household goods, furniture, pottery, camping gear and surplus military items.

Vaughan said “Tom Nix was an absolutely wonderful man, gentle and kind, firm and knowledgeable,” and was much like his father, Clint.

In 1946 the younger Nix married Clint Vaughan’s sister, Joyce. The senior Nix died in 1963 at age 73.

By the early 1980s, Scott Vaughan and his wife, Deborah, had settled in Midland — which by then “was booming” — after leaving New Mexico. Both were graduates of New Mexico State University, where he studied business after bowing out of engineering and she majored in medical technology via biology and chemistry.

The “extraordinarily busy” Nix hired his nephew, who took over the store’s operation when he retired in 1986.

“I had the very best training in the world of business,” Vaughan said of his mentoring by his uncle and father, both “brilliant businessmen” who had opposing but complementary management styles, one more laid-back than the other.

For the Vaughn couple, “The store was a lot of fun when we were rocking and rolling together,” Vaughan said. “It was a rush,” but not enough to rival the birth of their youngsters, Jennifer, Ryan and Taylor.

“When I was young, I liked the excitement of being busy, doing 15 things at once. I dwelt on learning as much as I could (about the merchandise).”

Like the Nix couple, the Vaughans maintained a want list for their customers.” The store was so “spick-and-span” that “you could eat a hamburger off the floor,” he said.

“I enjoyed my customers, the rapport,” Vaughan says. “I enjoyed it every day for 17 years.”

But, as they inexorably do, the years and the routine become wearisome. Work became “more and more difficult and less and less fun to deal with the inventory.”

Nix Trading Post closed down at 11 p.m. June 1, 2003.

By then, Vaughan had become adept in furniture refinishing and set up shop.

“It is totally joyous to see a piece of junk turn into a thing of beauty,” said Vaughan, who especially delights in working with mahogany.

Vaughan’s lifetime adventure is steeped in family, work, kayaking and fishing for smallmouth bass. “The passion is still the Devils River — the serenity.”

Deeply embedded in his soul is the remembrance of his uncle whose last days were tormented by Alzheimer’s disease.

“I would cry at night,” Vaughan said.

Vaughan said to his amazement, his uncle — seemingly with astounding clarity — whispered to him an ethical code of the astute businessman: “Never take a dime too much, but always get every penny that is due.”

Vaughan bawled. He said Nix hugged him that day in 2001 as death neared at age 82.

“When times are tough, I have no choice but to be upbeat, and neither do you,” said the contemplative Vaughan, although “We all have a choice, but what is the reason?”